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Grab a box of tissues, find a comfy chair, turn off the cell phone and the computer, and settle down to read Jo Knowles’ See You at Harry’s. When Kate Messner advised me to search for an ARC at NCTE, she warned me that the book would make me cry. I was thrilled to

get an ARC and when I sat down to read, I figured it would be sad but that I wouldn’t cry because it was probably just another sad middle grade book.

This is not a book that’s about what you think it will be about. It is a book, though, that will take your heart and run it through the equivalent of a paper shredder over and over again. You will find yourself stifling gasping sobs and weeping on the pages in front of you. This book will break your heart but you will love it anyway.Oh readers. How wrong I was.

See You at Harry’s is a conversation book. You will need to talk about it when you are finished. I passed my ARC to a student reader who came to me the next day raving about how unpredictable the book was. Today she told me she is going out to buy her own finished copy because even though she already read it, she needs to own her own copy. It’s just that good.

Highly, highly recommended for middle grade and high school readers. This one crosses the fence, folks. Pass it on to the readers in your life and they will be grateful.

When you say middle grade, is this a book 5th graders could handle? For some reason, I assumed this was a YA title, so I was just going to load it on my Kindle for my own enjoyment vs buying the book for my classroom library. What do you think?